A Murder in Time

by Julie McElwain

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Her blood pressure is spiking.” Annie sounded worried. “Should we notify Dr. Campbell?”

  “Maybe she’s in pain.”

  “They told us to wean her off the morphine.”

  “I’ll page Dr. Campbell, then. He can check her.” There was a shuffling sound, and the voice was farther away.

  “Are you going to call your nephew?” The other voice—Annie—was also moving away, but Kendra could hear the ripple of sly amusement. “Play matchmaker?”

  The other woman seemed to hesitate. Then, “I don’t think she’s Joey’s type.”

  “What? Too pretty for him?”

  “Too weird. There’s something off about a Frankenbaby, even if she’s all grown-up and gorgeous.”

  It was pain, not voices, that woke Kendra the next time. Her skull felt like it was being cleaved in two. If she wasn’t mistaken, she was going to have the mother of all headaches. No, correction. She was having the mother of all headaches. It throbbed from the right side of her head and radiated outward in jabs that shuddered all the way down to her toes.

  “Miss Donovan?” The voice was a quiet hum of concern, hovering somewhere above her.

  With considerable effort, Kendra opened her eyes, and met hazel ones behind horn-rimmed glasses. Round face. Sixtyish. The man was a little blurry around the edges, but she realized that could be her eyesight. She blinked a couple of times, and he sharpened in focus.

  “God. My head.” And her right arm ached unmercifully. That pain joined the throbbing of her head. She licked her lips. “Hurts. Water.”

  “Of course.” He poured water into a plastic cup and brought it over, holding a straw to her parched lips. Greedily, she sucked, unable to get enough of the icy liquid as it slid down her sore throat.

  “We’ll see about getting something for your head. We don’t want you to lose consciousness again. Gave us a scare—we expected you to come out of the coma a couple of days ago.” He pulled the straw away from her, ignored her tiny mewl of distress as he set the plastic cup on a metal tray table. “I’m Dr. Campbell.”

  What happened? She didn’t think she said that out loud. But he turned back to survey her, asking, “Do you remember anything?”

  “No.” Something wiggled in her consciousness, a slight parting of the wispy gray layers. “Yes. I-I don’t know.”

  “Do you know your name?”

  “Donovan . . . Kendra Donovan,” she whispered.

  “Who’s the president of the United States?”

  “What? I . . .” Oh, God! The memory, when it came, was like a flash flood, uprooting and destroying her peace of mind. “Sheppard. He’s dead. Oh, God.” Her breath caught on a dry sob. “They’re dead. Terry . . . Terry Landon. Traitor. The bastard! Shot him. Shot him!”

  “Calm down, Miss Donovan. Your memory appears intact—”

  “Did I shoot him?”

  “Who?”

  “The bastard. Landon.” Her throat was still so parched, it was like pushing words through a cheese grater.

  The doctor reached for her wrist, holding it lightly as he timed her pulse against the ticking seconds of his wristwatch. “Yes. I believe you did.”

  “Dead?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Good. Balakirev? Greene?” She shook off his touch, but by then the doctor had finished and was letting her go. She tried to push herself into a sitting position but was too weak, her arms as limp as wet noodles. She found herself sagging back against the hard pillows. “Get them?”

  “Miss Donovan, please, lie still.” He waited for a second, then leaned over her, flicking a penlight in her eyes. Appearing satisfied by what he saw, he slipped the penlight back into the front breast pocket of his white jacket and moved to the foot of the bed, where he unclipped the medical chart and began jotting down notes. “I’ll need to call your superiors. They left explicit instructions that I call as soon as you regained consciousness.” He touched her foot. “Can you feel this? Move your toes?”

  “Yes.” She wriggled her toes for good measure, although it took an astonishing amount of energy. “Balakirev? Greene?” she repeated hoarsely.

  “We need to do some tests. And I need to call your superiors,” he repeated. His expression softened as he stared down at her. “I can wait before making that call.”

  Kendra understood he was offering her more time. She shifted her gaze away from the doctor’s to the bland white ceiling of the hospital room. She was in the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, according to one of the nurses. Private room. Slightly upscale décor with cheerful floral curtains framing the window that revealed a dull gray sky. Paint the color of a not-quite-ripe cantaloupe splashed on the wall. Nice—for a hospital room. But it was still a hospital room: an EKG machine, green line silently bouncing on the darkened screen, to her left, next to the IV bag, its thin tube doing a slow drip into her left hand. Her nostrils felt slightly pinched. Belatedly, it occurred to her that she must have an oxygen cannula inserted in her nose.

  Aware that the doctor was waiting for her answer, she shook her head and instantly regretted it. The movement sent a fresh avalanche of pain crashing through her, followed by a greasy roll of nausea.

  “No,” she whispered huskily, and licked her lips again. She wanted to close her eyes, to somehow find her way back to that fuzzy, floating world where she’d been before she woke to discomfort, both physical and mental. But she refused to give into the temptation.

  “Call them. Now,” she ordered. “I want answers.”

  “Kendra.” This time, she recognized the gravelly voice even before her eyes popped open and she stared into the lined face of Philip Leeds, the associate director for the Behavioral Science Unit. Her boss.

  Except he hadn’t been her boss for almost a year, she remembered with a frown. Not since she’d been loaned out to the New York office’s special task force.

  “Sir.”

  “Welcome back.” The smile he offered didn’t erase the worry that shadowed his eyes. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I’ve been shot in the head.”

  The door swung open, and Dr. Campbell swept in. “Ah. I heard you’ve come to see our star patient, sir. I’ll have to ask you to keep this initial visit brief. Miss Donovan has a way to go before she’s up to answering any questions.”

  Kendra flicked the doctor a look. “I’m the one with questions.”

  “Or up to conducting an interrogation,” he continued smoothly. He turned to the associate director of the BSU. “We need to bring Miss Donovan down to Diagnostics. I’ve scheduled her for an MRI.”

  Leeds nodded. “Give us five minutes, Dr. Campbell.”

  Aware that the associate director was asking—no, demanding—a few minutes alone with the patient, Dr. Campbell moved toward the door. “Five minutes,” he agreed, but there was a stern note in his voice. While he was aware of Leeds’s clout, Dr. Campbell was the one with authority in this room, in this hospital, and with this patient.

  Leeds waited until the door swung shut before turning back to Kendra. “Peter Carson is flying down here. He wants to talk to you.”

  “I’m sure he does. Could you please pass me that water?” As Leeds glanced around, Kendra fiddled with the gadget on her bed, elevating the mattress so she was in a sitting position. There was something undignified about talking to your boss while flat on your back.

  He took the plastic pitcher and filled the cup. “Are you all right?”

  Kendra hated the weakness in her arms as she reached for the water. “I said I felt like I’d been shot in the head,” she muttered irritably, sticking the straw in her mouth. “Sir.”

  Leeds smiled, a little more genuine this time. “Well, your attitude’s the same.”

  “I feel like shit.”

  The smile disappeared. “I’m sorry, Kendra. Carson will be the one to debrief you, but what the hell happened?”

  Kendra’s hands trembled a
s she put the plastic water cup on the metal-arm tray that had been wheeled beside the bed. “Major clusterfuck—sorry. Terry Landon sold us out. Or would’ve, if he’d had time.”

  Briefly, she closed her eyes; saw Sheppard’s head explode. She opened her eyes, and Leeds could see the torment swimming in the inky depths. “He killed Daniel Sheppard right in front of me. Fucking bastard.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yeah. He’s a fucking bastard.”

  “Kendra.”

  “He’s the one who shot me. I wanted to go after Balakirev, Greene. That’s when Landon . . . shot Daniel. Then me.” Her gaze fell to her hands restlessly twisting the bed linen. She forced herself to stop. “If I hadn’t tried to go after Balakirev, Daniel would be alive.”

  “You know better than that, Agent Donovan.” Leeds waited until she lifted her eyes. “You didn’t kill Sheppard.”

  “I sure as hell didn’t help him.” Her breath hitched. “I worked with Landon. I’m a profiler, for Christ’s sake. I should’ve seen him . . . should’ve recognized—”

  “You’re not that powerful. Or that perfect.”

  She raised her hands, pressing her knuckles against her eyes. She shook her head. A mistake, since it once again sent the merciless knives slashing into her skull. They’d offered to increase her morphine intake, but she’d refused. She sighed, dropping her hands. “I took out Landon. The doctor . . . Dr. Campbell said he’s dead.”

  “He is.”

  “What about Greene and Balakirev? The ricin?”

  “Balakirev’s dead. He was caught in the cross fire. The ricin was packaged in pellet form, just as you predicted. We confiscated it—and Balakirev’s laptop. We’ve got CAT working on it. There’s a lot of encrypted information. Once they crack it, we hope to infiltrate several terrorist cells the bastard was doing business with.”

  “So we didn’t need Balakirev after all. We just needed his laptop.”

  “Well, I don’t think Peter Carson sees it quite that way. But technology makes most of us obsolete, doesn’t it?”

  “God, I’d love to get my hands on it.” Kendra’s fingers curled in frustration, digging into the crisp sheets.

  “I’ll bet you would.” He glanced at his watch. “My five minutes are up. I’m going to go before Dr. Campbell boots my ass out. I’ll check on you tomorrow. The Director indicated that he may stop by.” He walked to the door. Hesitated. “If you need to talk to anybody—”

  “I don’t.”

  He stared at her for a full minute, and decided not to remind her that she’d be required to do a full psych evaluation before returning to the Bureau. For now, he simply nodded. “You’re a valuable member of our team, Special Agent Donovan.”

  “Thank you. Ah . . . sir? Have you informed . . . do my parents know that I’m . . . never mind.” Her throat closed tightly, cutting off the remainder of her words. She was embarrassed to see her fingers, twisting in the bed linen again, tremble. She already regretted her impulsive question, could see pity in the associate director’s eyes.

  “As your nearest relatives, both your parents were informed,” he said gently.

  She nodded, and could no longer hold his gaze. “Thank you.”

  Leeds hesitated, and felt an unfamiliar anger burn inside him against the two scientists. Both, he knew, were brilliant in their fields—Dr. Eleanor Jahnke, in quantum physics, and Dr. Carl Donovan, in genome research and biogenetic engineering. But, as far as he was concerned, they were both miserable human beings.

  Because there was nothing he could do to ease the desolation he’d glimpsed in Kendra’s dark eyes before she’d looked away, he simply said, “Get some rest, Agent Donovan.”

  Kendra struggled against the humiliation and odd ache in her chest that had nothing to do with her injuries. When she finally lifted her gaze, she was surprised to see that she was once again alone in the room.

  And she still didn’t know what had happened to Sir Jeremy Greene.

  The next four days passed in a haze of tests and physical therapy. Kendra hated her weakness, hated how her limbs felt sluggish and ungainly. Unnatural. Every movement she forced herself to make was like pushing a giant boulder up a mountain, leaving her shaky and disoriented afterward, and in desperate need of a hospital bed.

  Luckily, she had one available.

  Leeds did not return, although she did hear that he checked on her regularly. As promised, Carson arrived to debrief her, solemnly informing her of the body count, which included Allan O’Brien in addition to Sheppard and Vale, and Danny Cortez from Team One. Two men from Vale’s SWAT team were also killed. Bill Noone had taken a bullet in the leg, but he was alive.

  Terry Landon didn’t count.

  Kendra thought of O’Brien, and his young wife who was now a widow, and wanted to weep. And to shoot Terry Landon all over again. Fucking bastard.

  Carson left before she could ask him about Greene, and in truth, by the time their session was over, she was too drained to formulate any coherent questions anyway. She wondered if some of that lassitude was her mood, or if they’d added morphine to her IV bag after all.

  Certainly time seemed to stretch out and then snap together, blurring and bleeding from one moment to the next, from evening to morning to afternoon. She never seemed to be alone. The nurses she’d heard talking—Annie (a motherly figure with sunny blond curls bouncing around a surprisingly youthful face) and Pamela (far less motherly, more angular with short salt-and-pepper hair)—now buzzed in and out of her hospital room like busy bees, checking her vitals, giving her little paper cups of pills, and accompanying her on her journey two floors below for tests, and then dropping another floor to the physical therapy department.

  “For someone who was in a coma a couple of weeks ago, you’re doing amazingly well,” Dr. Campbell remarked as he came into the room one morning. He picked up her chart from the foot of the bed and gave it a brisk assessing glance before smiling at her. “You’ve got a visitor.”

  “Oh?”

  “Kendra.”

  Her heart gave a lurch as her eyes swung to the door.

  The man standing in the threshold was tall and thin, and so much older than she remembered. His once black hair was now streaked lightly at the temples with silver, and there were lines carved on his handsome face that she couldn’t seem to recall. It’s been more than a decade.

  Yet as he stepped into the room, the expression on his face, in his thickly lashed, dark, dark brown eyes—her eyes, she realized with a weird sort of clutch of her heart—was sharply familiar, cool detachment laced with dissatisfaction.

  Some things never change.

  Seemingly oblivious to the undercurrents swirling in the room, Dr. Campbell continued to smile. “It’s good of you to visit Kendra, Dr. Donovan,” he said. If he thought it odd that the man hadn’t visited or called when his daughter’s life was hanging by a thread, he gave no sign. “I’ll give you some privacy.” He strode to the door, paused. “Kendra is doing remarkably well, but please don’t overtire her.”

  “I understand. Thank you, Dr. Campbell.” Dr. Carl Donovan waited until the other man left the room, then said coolly, “So . . . this is why you gave up what could have been a brilliant future?”

  Kendra didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Twelve years, and his first words to her were a criticism. Typical. “What’re you doing here?” She sounded a little breathless, but otherwise steady. “I’m the one with the head injury, but apparently you forgot that you disowned me.”

  “Don’t be impertinent, Kendra.” Her father’s mouth compressed into a thin line. “I received a phone call from Associate Director Leeds, who suggested that if I wanted to keep doing my research, I should visit you.”

  Kendra frowned. “I’m not following. What does your research have to do with me?”

  “I’m working at the Fellowship Institute in Arizona—”

  “On human genome research. I know.”

  “Then you should know that the
government is our largest donor.”

  Kendra remembered the look of pity in the associate director’s eyes. “Ah. I see. Leeds blackmailed you. That’s why you’re here.” Not because her father wanted to see her. Heaven forbid that he actually cared. And odd how that hurt. She hadn’t seen her father in a dozen years, but he still had that power.

  In a fastidious move, Carl lifted his pant leg to keep its pressed line before taking a seat in the chair next to the bed. He cocked a brow. “Are you going to tell me how you ended up here . . . like that?”

  “Oh, you know. Just saving the world.”

  “I could point out that there are easier and undoubtedly more productive ways to save the world. If you had continued—”

  “How’s Barbara?” she interrupted. “The children?”

  He hesitated. He wasn’t a man to be diverted, but since the previous subject was distasteful to him, and pointless, he allowed it. “Barbara has taken time off from the Institute to write a book. The children are showing remarkable cognitive abilities.”

  “Patricia and Stewart, right?” She recalled the names of her half siblings. “Or do you just refer to them as Test Subjects One and Two?”

  “I see your sense of humor has not improved.”

  “No, I don’t suppose it has. But then, when it comes right down to it, I was a failure, wasn’t I? Didn’t quite fulfill the genius potential that you and Mother had hoped for. How is Mother, by the way? Will she be coming?”

  “I have no idea. I’m sure she’s being kept apprised of your condition.”

  “Nothing says motherly love like a good text.”

  Carl gave her a reproving look. “Eleanor has tremendous responsibility at CERN. She’s part of the research team conducting experiments at the Large Hadron Collider—”

  “I know. Leave it to Mom to want to create a black hole right here on earth.”

  “Don’t be absurd. That is typical media hyperbole, as you well know,” he said stiffly.

  “My lamentable sense of humor.” She sighed, and suddenly felt bone-weary. Phillip Leeds had meant well, she knew. But it would take more than blackmail to mend a family that had shattered years ago. Hell, who was she kidding? She never had a family, not in its truest form. She’d been a lab rat. A Frankenbaby, as Annie had called her.